Looking for good foiliage plant?

[WelshOneEmma]

We recently decided to change all of the plants in Hugo's cage (7 month old veiled) and filled it with a hibiscus, 3 x ficus, 2 x draceana's and a passion flower. They were new plants, so looked a bit 'bare' when we put them in. It is now 3 weeks later, ficus is fine, as are the dracaena's. The hibiscus seems to love the conditions and is growing well (he loves chomping on the leaves), but the one that surprised me was the passion flower. It has gone mad! If anyone is looking for something that will fill the cage, I recommend that! You will still need other plants and vines etc, but it is now wrapped round all the plants and looks brilliant! Nice flowers to boot too!

 

[gtarring]

Pictures!!!

Can you please post pictures!!!!!!! I'm a newbie and looking for the best way to decorate my cage that will be coming soon!

 

[WelshOneEmma]

I'll take some tomorrow. His lights are off now, so will take some pics tomorrow and post them.

 

[THECHAMMAN]

great plants are schefflera and pothos, i also incorporate bromeliads and some hardier orchids to make my cages look nice. outside i have hibiscus and potato vines with bromeliads all over the place for good looks.

 

[Miss Lily]

We had a passion flower in the garden and it went wild and took over! We had to dig it out eventually as it pulled on the fence! Even now a couple of years later we still find new growth shoots in odd places! I did think about one for Amy's cage, but thought it might just join everything together and make removing branches and vines to clean very difficult!

 

[WelshOneEmma]

We had a passion flower in the garden and it went wild and took over! We had to dig it out eventually as it pulled on the fence! Even now a couple of years later we still find new growth shoots in odd places! I did think about one for Amy's cage, but thought it might just join everything together and make removing branches and vines to clean very difficult!

We had to throw out the wood we had bought as it all went rotten, so have been struggling with vines etc for him. They don't have much strength to them, but they cover what we have in there quite well. I was just really shocked at how much it has grown!

 

[SliK JiM]

I'm looking forward to the pics tomorrow as if the growth is really something I might have to get myself one! Probably gonna get a pothos too, so it's going to be a jungle in mine soon! If you're struggling for vines, get some soft twist tie (I'd never heard of or seen the stuff till Jojackson suggested it) It's bloody brilliant! Get the 8mm stuff and you're laughing. I bought 25m of the 5mm stuff for £10.55 inc p&p and it's ace. Had to double twist it to make it worth while a standalone vine, but you can wrap it around stuff and it's awesome.

 

[Miss Lily]

I'm looking forward to the pics tomorrow as if the growth is really something I might have to get myself one! Probably gonna get a pothos too, so it's going to be a jungle in mine soon! If you're struggling for vines, get some soft twist tie (I'd never heard of or seen the stuff till Jojackson suggested it) It's bloody brilliant! Get the 8mm stuff and you're laughing. I bought 25m of the 5mm stuff for £10.55 inc p&p and it's ace. Had to double twist it to make it worth while a standalone vine, but you can wrap it around stuff and it's awesome.

Where did you get the 'soft twist tie' from? Sounds like it could be useful.

 

[SliK JiM]

I bought it off ebay. You can find it elsewhere, just google it! It's really good stuff though! Here's Jojackson's homer sitting on some:

I plan to loosely wrap bamboo canes with it in the future as it will work really well!

 

[WelshOneEmma]

Ok, so I have attached some pictures we took when we first put the new plants in, so still looking a bit bare! I am afraid that we have been stupidly busy in work this week, so not getting home til 8.30pm, so missed him again this evening. I will definately take some pictures tomorrow so you can see the difference. And just for fun, managed to get a pic of him sleeping on the hibiscus with his face against the cage!

On another note, got a brilliant bargain today and feel I need to share. We share a building with 3 (phone company) and they decided to sell off some of the greenery they had in reception. Got a 6ft ficus (very bushy etc) for £20 - bargain! Hugo's gonna love that!! Is it sad I buy my chameleon presents???

 

[dodolah]

You call THAT bare?!
Then, my enclosure would be a desert by comparison.
That is perfect. You need no more plants imho. Give the chameleon a leg room also you know. So, he can maneuver easily.

It's good! but, do be careful of burn risk since I notice your lights are inside of the cage.

 

[WelshOneEmma]

You call THAT bare?!
Then, my enclosure would be a desert by comparison.
That is perfect. You need no more plants imho. Give the chameleon a leg room also you know. So, he can maneuver easily.

It's good! but, do be careful of burn risk since I notice your lights are inside of the cage.

Haha, it's looking a bit fuller now the plants have grown a bit, and he loves the hibiscus. There is a lot of walking room for him, it's just hard to see. I just was worried he would feel exposed so when we had some spare cash got him a load of new plants. I also know about the lights. As per the usual thing on here, we were told by the pet store that would be fine. We keep an eye on it (light is on a dimmer so that helps control heat) but bf is about to start working again (was made redundant) so when we have some spare cash, we will make a new cage for him, using the 6ft ficus as the middle plant, and will build vines etc around it. Should give the other plants room to grow. Lights will then be on the top. Had to put plans on hold as we calculated it would cost about £500 for the materials.

 

[FlipInOut]

Sweet setup. How much did that cost. I bet he is one happy chameleon.

 

[WelshOneEmma]

Sweet setup. How much did that cost. I bet he is one happy chameleon.

I'll be honest, it cost quite a bit as the pet shop saw us coming!! The cage, including the light fittings etc cost about £450 in total. I am also including in that the things that they sold us that we didn't need, like substrate, plus all the wood that we had to throw out as it wasn't treated. There is probbaly about £90 worth of plants in there too. But we used stuff we had in the house for a home made dripper, so that was cheap as chips!

You would think he would like it, but he is going through a grumpy stage again. Typical man!!

 

[Eric Adrignola]

You crazy Europeans with your light bulbs in the cage... hehe.

I really like the cage, by the way. I'm planning something similar for my deremensis down the road.
Is there a vent fan on it? Seems like it'd get stuffy. Nice though.

 

[WelshOneEmma]

You crazy Europeans with your light bulbs in the cage... hehe.

I really like the cage, by the way. I'm planning something similar for my deremensis down the road.
Is there a vent fan on it? Seems like it'd get stuffy. Nice though.

I know, we just have to be more careful when misting. It will change when we get a new cage. There are vents on both sides, two at the top and two at the bottom. The air doesn't get stagnant, and we have just removed the heater as it has hardly been used. We have put bamboo in the plants, and then connected vines to the bamboo, so he has lots of walkways. Sometimes you can be looking for hiome, and then 10 mins later notice a pair of eyes staring straight back. was in front of you all along!

 

[Miss Lily]

I bought it off ebay. You can find it elsewhere, just google it! It's really good stuff though! Here's Jojackson's homer sitting on some:
I plan to loosely wrap bamboo canes with it in the future as it will work really well!

Oh yes, I've got some of that! Didn't realise that's what it's called though! Duh, silly me!! Thanks though SlikJim! Must get some more as it looks really good twisted together!

 

[Miss Lily]

I looked online and found a place that sells soft twist tie in brown as well as green! The brown one will make great looking vines! There's even a stockist locator on there too - I found that my local ironmongery/hardware store in town sells it. Guess where I'm going at the weekend?

 

[WelshOneEmma]

Ok, so taken some more photos, unfortunately they don't show very well how much the passion flower has taken over, which is kinda what this post was about! Included a few of Hugo before he got annoyed with me, and also one of his new plant for when he has his new cage!

 

[WelshOneEmma]

And a couple more! You can see that he has plenty of places to hide and room to move about!